


Completion

by Scribe



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dom buys a house. Future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Completion

_I heard you bought a house,_ says Billy, as though it's been only a matter of days since their last conversation.

_Yeah, a couple of years ago,_ says Dom. _I heard about Ali_, he adds. _Are you all right?_

_No,_ says Billy, _But it's beginning to seem like it may be a possibility in the future._

_Come visit._

_I will._

 

The house is more of a cottage than anything. It is set back from the road by a long, winding drive. A few acres of forest surround it, giving the illusion of total isolation.

_All mine_, says Dom proudly, _and the best part is, I don't have to mow it._ Billy is reluctant to go inside.

The house smells of paint and sunshine. Dom sits in the kitchen and allows Billy time to explore. He discovers that the upstairs is a cheery yellow color. Half the doors are dark wood and half have been freshly painted a pure white. When he asks about it, Dom says, _I got distracted_.

The days pass. They don't talk very much. Billy wanders the house and land and finds a myriad of similarly abandoned projects. A few minutes' walk into the woods a platform straddles the gap between to trees. _I thought I might build a tree house,_ says Dom. This time, when Billy inquires, he says _I was waiting for inspiration_. A week later Billy descends the stairs to the cellar, looking for a box of chocolates that Dom swears he left down there. On the wall of the stairway he finds a sentence written. A pile of rocks ceases to be a pile of rocks when one man looks upon it and sees a cathedral.

_What does it mean?_ he asks.

_I don't know,_ comes the reply, _I was hoping you would._

Similar enigmatic phrases and poems litter the house, penciled onto walls and ceilings and floors. Some are already fading. He comments once that paint might be a better idea. _No,_ says Dom, _that would be far too permanent._

Billy has hated being indoors ever since she died. In nature he can be assured that he will never encounter the cloying smell of medicine, and whispers and coughs and private conferences do not echo in such a vast space. There is no finality in the wilderness. He spends most of his time sitting in a hammock on Dom's half-built porch. It has no screens or stairs, but at least there is a roof for shade and a small table. One day when they are having tea there, side by side, he asks Dom if there is a reason for all the unfinished projects. Dom smiles and says nothing.

There comes a night when Dom is awakened by cold, empty space next to him in the bed. He follows his instincts outside. Billy is sitting cross-legged in the incomplete tree house.

_Come down from there, Bill, _ he calls, _It's not very stable._

_I know, _says Billy, his words almost swallowed in the great emptiness of night. _It matches how I'm feeling._ He comes down anyway. Dom holds him for a long while there at the base of the tree, wind stroking goosebumps gently up and down his bare back and arms. _I'm not sure of what words make good condolences,_ he admits.

_You're doing just fine,_ Billy tells him.

 

They go back to Scotland one last time. On the last day of their visit Billy takes Dom to the cemetery. He's been there once before, many years ago, and it unnerves him just as much the second time. He keeps a respectful distance while Billy kneels at his parents' graves, feeling very much a callous intruder into another family's everlasting, if quiet, grief. They go last to Ali's grave. There Billy doesn't permit him to stand politely back, but clutches at his hand while he speaks almost inaudibly to the memory of his wife.

He waits until they have returned before he asks what Billy meant when he told Ali that she was right about Dom. He isn't sure he wants to hear the answer. He and Ali were never on the best of terms.

_Once when she was in the hospital she told me that I would need you when she was gone,_ Billy says. _I didn't believe her._ Neither of them mention it again.

 

It takes almost a year before Dom tells Billy the secret of his projects.

_They were just my way to pass the time, waiting for you,_ he says. _I liked being surrounded by incomplete things. They had such hope. And when enough time had passed for that to turn to despair, I would make another one. I always felt comfortable around them._

Billy sighs, thinking of Dom as an incomplete thing, living a life of waning hope for so many years.

 

They stay in the half-finished house even though neither of them need it anymore. It's idiosyncratic enough for both their tastes. It reminds them of the lives they once led on either side of the world, lives full of questions now answered and rediscovered and answered again.

And anyway, it's home.


End file.
